Tens or Hundreds of Thousands of Jobs in the US Can Also Be Created by SDR Allocations
For Immediate Release: October 14, 2025
Washington, DC — A new paper from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) estimates that some 194,000 lives, as a lower bound, could have been saved worldwide had the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) in March 2020, when the IMF recommended a large issuance. At that time it was already clear to the IMF and other economists that the pandemic recession in that year would be very severe.
The report, by economists Mark Weisbrot, Eric Freeman, Francisco Rodríguez, and John Schmitt and senior researchers Joe Sammut and Ivana Vasić-Lalović, bases its projections for the US labor market on the boost in US exports that would be stimulated by a major new SDR allocation.
“The world recession in 2020 killed an estimated 1.94 million people in developing countries,” said Mark Weisbrot, economist and Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “Many of them could have been saved with a new SDR issuance at that time.
“The SDR allocations also create tens or even hundreds of thousands of export-related jobs in the United States,” Weisbrot added. “The US government can make this happen very quickly, without any cost — either at present, or in the future — to the US budget.”
Of the $650 billion worth of SDRs allocated in 2021, $209 billion worth went to emerging and developing economies (not including China). These saved many lives in the developing world, but not as many as would have been saved during 2020. This was more development assistance than these countries received that year from all other sources, and unlike most other development assistance there was no debt or conditions attached.
Developing countries not including China import about $1.1 trillion worth of goods and services from the United States annually, directly supporting some 4.5 million US jobs. When they receive SDRs, they have more international reserves, and their economies generally do better as a result. This causes them to increase imports from the US, creating more jobs here.
The report estimates that the number of US export-related jobs that would result from a new SDR issuance of $650 billion would be, conservatively, 41,000. A larger allocation means more US jobs: a $2.8 trillion-worth issuance of SDRs at the IMF, which the US House of Representatives approved in 2020, would have created an estimated 160,000 US jobs.
SDRs are an international reserve asset created by the IMF and distributed to member governments. They are not a currency, but under IMF rules, member countries that need hard currency (e.g., dollars, euros) can exchange them for these currencies.
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